Each month we feature a selection of your letters
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Spring into action
I WANTED TO SHARE A RECENT VISIT TO Spring Lakes dive site in Nottingham. We took ten divers, including two trainees and doing their first open water Ocean Diver lessons. We had the place to ourselves, a lovely sunny day and perfectly still water. We found this site a couple of weeks ago by absolute chance; it’ s only an hour away from us and provided the basic facilities we need to carry out training and diving.
The site manager‘ Scooby’ welcomed us and gave our whole group a briefing on the dive site, which is developing every week. It offers all kit hire, parking close to the water, a toilet and nearby café and dive shop if needed.
Our Ocean Diver trainees did their lessons on the shallow training platform and then the deeper training platform, both followed by short dives to concentrate on buoyancy control.
We had two trainee Dive Leaders doing some of their skills, leading dives on a new site for them.
Our newly qualified Open Water Instructor Joe Williams led the day with a dive plan for all to follow and Diving Officer Adam Faunt to assist. The day went really well and we will be using the site again going forwards. We plan to organise a club family day to include snorkelling and paddle boards, which the site offers, hopefully we can get other non-diving family members in the water. ADAM FAUNT, Diving Officer Sheffield BSAC 0256
Augmented reality bytes
OVER THE PAST SIX MONTHS, I’ VE BEEN building a project called African Dive Adventures around a simple question: could divers be given a better visual
26 understanding of sharks before they ever enter the water?
The idea grew from my own interest in diver preparation and species awareness at Protea Banks in South Africa. I wanted to create something more engaging than a standard web page, something that could help divers recognise shark shape, movement and behaviour differences before a real encounter. That has gradually developed into an interactive 3D and augmented reality platform that allows divers to compare moving sharks on a mobile phone and, on supported devices, place life-size sharks into their room or surrounding space using AR.
One part of the project is a Shark Awareness Training page where divers can compare five common Protea Banks sharks – bull shark, tiger shark, hammerhead, ragged-tooth and blacktip – in 3D and AR before a dive. Alongside that, I’ ve also built a growing toolbox of around 20 dive-planning and diver-preparation tools, including an interactive advanced drysuit weight calculator.
What has surprised me most is how strongly people respond when they realise they can place a life-size shark into their own room using a mobile phone. Most people have never experienced anything like it. Once a diver can walk around a shark in 3D, compare its shape properly, or see it at life size in their own space, the species becomes much more real and much easier to remember. For me, that is where the educational value really starts.
The wider project now includes a completed Shark Zoo and is expanding into megafauna, including whales, rays and dolphins. It has been a huge amount of work, but also an amazing journey. My hope is simply to make marine education more visual, practical and memorable for divers before they get in the water. STEPHEN SPURGIN, African Dive Adventures